


The Moirae

by Prochytes



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Greeks knew you cannot have just one fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moirae

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for “X-Men: First Class” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”. Minor details from the various comic-verses have been amalgamated for background. Moira quotes from "The Silence of the Lambs". Originally written for LJ to a prompt from dark_fest in 2012. Angst and dark themes (elements of non-con and mind rape).

 

Moira MacTaggert was a redhead from Ohio. She came to teach at Charles’ School about five years after it was founded. Moira’s mutant talent was spinning webs. This pricked Charles with nostalgia, much later, when young Mr. Parker started courting Kitty. Charles never told Peter that he had known another web-slinger, long ago. He knew that others valued being an original much more highly than he. 

 

Charles was a little surprised when it happened. But it felt so natural, so _right_ , that the sensation soon subsided. Moira liked flowers, and Shakespeare. Charles enjoyed nothing better than wheeling himself through the Mansion’s garden at her side, as he reflected how sadly mistaken Juliet was about roses.

 

***

 

Moira MacTaggert was a brunette from Vermont. She originally visited Westchester on business, since she was by trade a census-taker. Moira was fond of quoting a popular novel to illustrate the hazards of her profession: “A census-taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some Fava beans and a big Amarone.” Charles had never read the work in question. A private life-time box at the opera that was Erik made the antagonists of literature look quite tame.

 

Moira had a glorious, dirty laugh, and a taste for punk. She was hard to convince that Charles had once been groovy.

 

It had to be confessed that there were complications. Moira was usually a loner. This time, she enjoyed a circle of acquaintances, all of whom had to be adjusted. Charles did not, as a matter of courtesy, go out of his way to read his friends, but he suspected that some of them had seen a pattern that went beyond coincidence. It was hard to miss Hank’s narrowed gaze, or the faint peals of Kitty’s worry, like distant wind-chimes.  

 

And then, of course, there was Raven, who burgled the Mansion just so they could discuss it.

 

“It’s only the name, Raven,” he told her. She was currently disguised as Scott, which did not help. “Nothing else changes. Things don’t...” he swallowed “... things don’t really alter because of what you call them.”

 

She shrugged. “I suppose you’re the expert, Professor X.”

 

***

 

Moira MacTaggert was...

 

Well, this time she was actually Scottish, for one thing, although it had to be said that this was a coincidence (even a stopped clock is right twice a day). Moira was not Scottish when he first knew her, although she had boasted a paternal grandfather from the Old Country about whom she thought occasionally. She had been thinking about him on that evening, that first evening in the Oxford pub, when Charles looked up, flushed with drink, to see her standing there, her virtues shining about her head. Charles’ old eyes moistened at the thought.

 

It was no mean feat, to talk to the children about the ethics of their powers, while Moira (a doctor now, a student of life’s passing) looked out at him, and his back-up body slumbered behind her on the screen.  But this, he knew for sure, was meant to be. Charles remained a great believer in Fates. Fates, it should be stressed, not Fate. The Greeks of old had said that the Fates, the Moirae, were three sisters.

 

They knew that one Moira would never be enough. 

 

FINIS

 


End file.
